Acknowledged, Meleager. Inbound, two-two-one-one, carem four. Flipping the toggle for the transmitter, Reddog mutters to himself, "Frak, frak, I hate this part." The Mark VI Viper wobbles a bit as the young pilot twitches the control stick, but turns gracefully enough to line up on the landing deck of the Hunter Class ship.

Easy, Reddog, easy. Keep the throttle light, and flare right before touchdown. Just like the simulator. I'll be right behind you, Vortex chimes in from just off his Port wing. The Mark VII flown by Old Mel's CAG slides gracefully back and takes up a following formation.

Easy for you to say, Vortex. You're actually older than the ship you're flying. I still say we should just let the automatics handle our landings. Isn't that what they're for, anyway?

Sure, kid. The Automatics are great. But I'm not going to pass you if the only landing you can make is while you're sleeping. You don't have time in combat to let the ship do the work. You need to be able to come in hot and touch down, even dead stick if that's what it takes. Now throttle back thirty. Yeah, that's it. Nice and slow this time. Combat landing protocol will be the next step.

Reddog's Viper shudders a little in response to its pilot, but is now skimming only meters from the landing deck. Reddog throttles back, cutting relative velocity to near zero, and flares the fighter up twenty-five degrees. The Viper settles almost gently to the deck and slides only a couple feet before the mags kick in, bringing the fighter to a halt. Reddog sighs and slumps in relief. Finally, he hadn't slid into anything important.

Vortex's Mark VII flips gracefully over the downed Viper as the CAG waves happily down at the nugget. Not bad, kid. You barely even scraped the deck plate this time. Now Checker owes me thirty cubits!

"Oh, frak me, Checker's gonna cream me at Pyramid tonight!"

Game Description:

Meleager, or "Old Mel", is a Hunter-class Escortstar nominally assigned to BSG-75, technically under the command of Galactica and Commander Adama.

Meleager has been attached to the 24th Viper Training Squadron for the last seven years. Pilots in the final stages of their training are transferred to Meleager and her two accompanying vessels for their final six months of qualification for combat landing and manuevering training, keeping the Nuggets from "bothering" the flight crews of the 'Combat Commands'...vessels such as Galactica, Pegasus, and the members of the various 120 other-some-odd Battlestar Groups of the Colonial Fleet.

Meleager is slated for decommisioning during the next six months to a year, and as such has become a low priority posting for the fleet and the needs of the Admiralty. Combined with a mid-space collision three months ago that killed or wounded a significant portion of its crew and damaged a little over a dozen various small craft, and the Meleager is notably understaffed. Nonetheless, her Commanding Officer, Major Ivana Deering, has been ordered to prepare for a transfer to command of the Spatha (a Gladius-class Gunstar) after it finishes its refit, and intends to take almost all of her crew with her, so readiness and morale remain high in anticipation of a mass-move into a bigger and better vessel.

Old Mel is quite understrength at the current time, notably due to the aforementioned circumstances. With only 416 crew (of her alotted 800), a short air group of 20 Vipers (most manned by Nuggets), and a single flight of Raptors, the ship, though maintained as well as possible by Major Deering, is not quite up to full fighting strength. While she is capable of handling the pirates that plague the Erebos Belt or even a couple of pitched wartime battles, her dearth of personnel and small craft would doom her quickly if the war resumed...unless she found additional personnel and small craft in short order.

Meleager is currently on the outskirts of the Erebos Belt, conducting training missions in the fringes of the asteroids; today is the day that Galactica retires and then proceeds to Caprica to meet up with an honor guard composed of most of the Colonial Fleet to be escorted to its final resting place in orbit as a 'living museum'. The crew of Meleager, however, has already had to deal with several 'incidents'--none directly Cylon-related yet--and has had their first major 'situation' drop in on them...and it has only been three hours since most of them came on-shift.

<<APPLICATIONS ARE WELCOME AT ANY TIME>> Please, feel free to join in.

Concept

The game should be considered 'fanon' in all senses rather than 'canon'. In point of fact, most Colonial Fleet ships other than Battlestars, Vipers, and Raptors are purely speculation in view of the re-imagined series. However, the game will attempt to stay within the bounds of the 'feeling' of the re-imagined BSG series. Note, I am incorporating what we saw in 'Caprica' as well as both 'Razor' and 'The Plan' (now also 'Blood and Chrome'); while there are still the same number of 'skinjobs', things will not go down the same path as the series as the campaign progresses. This is a 'possibility'--just as equally valid--as what we saw. After all, "All this has happened before, and will happen again." Nowhere was it ever said it happened the same way.

This game is aiming to give the players and PCs a view of the world of the Second Cylon War from a different angle, looking to give the players that 'feel' while still giving them something new. This is going to be a relatively malleable campaign...

Mechanics

Characters are 'Recruit'-level and submitted in the 'Application' thread in the Game Forum. Players will be non-senior Fleet/Marines Officers/Enlisted or Civilians that end up in vicinity of the Escortstar Meleager in the Erebos Belt of the Helios Alpha subsystem on the day that the original Battlestar Galactica, BS 75, retires. This would also be the day that the Cylons are putting 'The Plan' into action...well, depending on the Cylon Faction, 'The Plan' Varies. What the PCs do can affect (although neither stop nor negate) the Cylon attack on the Colonies.

For major decisions--such as what the Meleager will do in the aftermath of the attack, or how a given event takes place--the players vote in the OOC Thread on one of several options. Simple majority carries, although reasonable compromises combining elements from several options (and explaining how they will do X) reached between the players and presented to the GM is also accepted.

Links

Fan-made resources in use for this game; take ideas freely from this, but please check agains the 'Background' Thread Group on the forum. While many thanks are due to the team that put together these useful resources together, I have a fairly clear picture of how the Colonial--and Cylon--'war machines' work. It is based on what we see in the series, combined with ideas from these three books, and then shaped with practical knowledge of what an actual, functional military takes to work...so there are differences to these books.Colonial Warbook IIe (Hunter Class is on p 116.)The Thin Blue LineAres Guide to Infantry Weapons of the Colonies

This is the map that is based on the writers' notes and 'bible' for the new BSG; we are using this as opposed to the MWP-produced map. (This one makes a great deal more sense.)Detailed Map of the Twelve Colonies

Just a few hours.. basically about the same time frame as the miniseries opens. And in case anyone is wondering.. I don't mind if everyone applies as fighter pilots.. we know from the show that fighter pilots in the Colonial Fleet don't stick only to their cockpits.

It's been brought to my attention that the link for the Thin Blue Line book requires registration on the host site and that registration there has been disabled. Looking through their forums, I found that they have recently had trouble with spambots trying to register and have temporarily shut registration down to let the spammers get bored.

I wrote a message to the site owner to ask what his plans are for keeping registration offline and will be checking with the book's author to make sure it's ok for me to distribute the book through email. I'll keep you updated.

Also, please don't feel that lack of this book or the other two will in any way impact your acceptance into this game.

Hmm. I've not had the opportunity to play BSG yet. I haven't even finished watching the series. Consider me interested. Also how difficult would it be (seeing as how you've started with 2 Viper Jocks) to add in a non-fighter pilot character?

I have no requirements whatsoever for what kind of character you want to play. In fact, I was somewhat surprised that I didn't end up with enough Viper Pilot submissions to fill out a squadron.. that tends to be how things usually go with BSG games IME.

If you take a look at the forum, you'll see that I've expanded the concept of a 'Viper Training Ship' to a 'Viper Training Squadron'. I would still prefer that you design a junior officer or senior noncom on Meleager, but I'll work with you on a posting anywhere in the Squadron (maybe I should rework that to Group.. hmm). Just don't get attached to your posting if it's off-ship, as I intend Old Mel to be the primary abode of the PC's... at least for awhile.

Potential positions are many.. You could be a Raptor or Shuttle pilot.. or stay out of the cockpit altogether and be a Marine on Echidna, Meleager, or Eleos. Fenris is too small and doesn't have Marines. A bridge officer on any of the ships. Part of the training staff on the ships or on base. A flight deck noncom similar to Chief Tyrol's role in the series... the possibilities are wide-open.

As for not having finished the series, that's immaterial. I myself only finished the series last week.

Posting rate.. I tend to go by what the players do. I find that each game usually finds it's own rate between what the players and GM can manage well between them.